Patchwork Boy
by StoneandSilence
Summary: A missing scene between Diego and Five, set during episode 10 after Vanya destroys the mansion. Could be considered a sequel to 'We All Fall Down' but it's not necessary to have read it.


Diego gets to the Super Star and Five is there already, sitting by himself with his eyes trained on the floor, looking small and young and unfathomably tired. Not too long ago he was laying in a bed with stitches in his side and an IV in his arm. Probably too early for him to be up and around, but it's not like the apocalypse was going to wait for anyone.

He watches as Five runs his hands through his hair and then stops, cradling his head, elbows resting on bony knees. They're all feeling lost right now, shouldering the weight of Mom and Pogo and everything they've lost but Diego thinks Five is shouldering a lot more than that.

Five had seen it coming. For forty-five years he'd seen it, lived it and dreamed it and now it was here. End days, the apocalypse, his life come full circle. It didn't seem nearly so crazy now everyone Diego loved was dead besides his siblings. He looks around but doesn't see any of the others. Well, they'd be along. He picks up some shoes at the counter and makes his way over, sitting down in one of the hard plastic chairs to remove his boots.

"Hey," he says, and Five doesn't even look up. "Anyone else here yet?"

That gets him a head shake. Well, it was a beginning. "How's the battle scar?"

"What?"

Diego nods, indicating where shrapnel had pierced his body just two days before. "How's it feel?"

"It's...fine," Five says, sounding resigned.

"The stitches holding up?" Diego presses, and Five gets to his feet, clearly intent on finding somewhere Diego isn't.

"I'm _fine_," he bites out, words spit between clenched teeth. He looks up at Diego with hooded eyes, face full of venom but Diego thinks the only one being poisoned is Five.

"No you're not," Diego says, looking his brother in the face and in the eyes because he's tired of this song-and-dance they've all been playing with each other since before he can remember. Maybe if any of them had ever learned how to open up and deal with their shit things would have been different. Maybe mom might still be alive and maybe Vanya wouldn't be getting ready to blow the world apart. "You're not 'fine', Five. The world's about to end. Vanya's about to destroy everything. It's all about to go up like a bonfire and _none_ of us are 'fine' with it."

The scathing look Five gives him implies violence but there's something else too, something shattered in his eyes, an old pain Diego's only just starting to notice. Or maybe Five just isn't bothering to hide it anymore. Diego wonders if he's really seeing his brother for the first time in almost twenty years, if everything else was just a shell game he'd played with everyone, broken fragments hidden behind scoffing superiority and casual insults.

A patchwork boy, pieces stitched together with caustic thread.

Over to their right someone bowls a strike and a cheer goes up from the gaggle of people crowded around the cheap plastic tables. _They're all gonna to die soon_ he realizes, and it's such a strange thing to think. People going about their lives all over the world tonight, oblivious to it's ending and then he realizes this is how Five's felt all along. Trapped in a world of living ghosts, walking corpses on every street corner. No wonder he was always in such a bad mood.

"I'm sorry," he says, apologizing for a lot of things and not understanding them all. Five's eyes shift and he looks about to say something but moves away instead; Diego pretends he doesn't see him steady himself against a chair. Pretends he doesn't know Five's been limping around all day, relying on furniture and hand railings for support, leaning against walls in an affectation of casual boredom to hide the fact he needed help staying upright.

Diego realizes they've all been ignoring each other's pain for so long none of them even know how to acknowledge it anymore. Reginald Hargreeves hadn't believed in pain and hadn't let any of them believe in it either. If you were bleeding you patched yourself up and kept going; pain was useful only in as much as it alerted the body to damage. If pain wasn't physical then it wasn't real. It didn't matter.

That had been their takeaway as kids. No wonder they were all so screwed up. And as much as he would like to be number one at _something_, Diego has to admit Five probably wins the award for most psychologically fucked among them (though Vanya's likely edged him out, now). And none of them had known how to deal with it, so they did what they always did and ignored it instead. Including Five.

They should probably work on that.

Diego tries, he really does. "Just take it easy, okay?" he says gently. Five's made an impressive recovery all things considered but he's still injured and Diego's still worried whether he wants to admit it or not. But Five just sneers at him, that curl in his lip like a permanent scar. Of course he does. Because Five learned their father's lessons about pain probably better than all of them, has had a lifetime to practice; an entire planet as his classroom. Diego's only had to bury one sibling and that was hard enough.

He wants to say more but doesn't, grabs a ball instead and throws hard, listens to the satisfying roll and crash as it obliterated wooden pins. He briefly considers the wiseness of pointing out Five won't be able to do shit about either Vanya or the end of the world if he caught another fever, and decides he's not drunk enough to try and tell Five anything right now.

Anyway, they had a world to save.

"You're up," he says, and Five just stands there in brooding silence.

"Fine, whatever." He takes another turn while they wait for the others to arrive.


End file.
